When anyone brings up the
topic of fictional heroes, it’s hard to deny that Robin Hood is one that would
probably sit somewhere up near the top of the list. He’s been in Disney movies,
made a goofy appearance in Shrek, and of course has had games and toys fashioned
after his story. Well, Cinemaware and Capcom have brought Robin to life once
again in the console video game world with Robin Hood: Defender of the Crown for
PS2.
In Robin Hood, you of course
play as the green-garbed hero in a story set in England around 1100AD. The story
opens up as Robin and his band of merry men (and lady) are defending Sherwood
Forest from Robin’s arch nemesis … the Sheriff of Nottingham. As the story
unfolds, you learn that good King Richard has been kidnapped and is being held
for ransom, and his somewhat cracked brother John has taken over the throne in
his absence, plunging England into a feud between lords vying for land and
growth. It becomes apparent that only Robin can help to restore peace and
prosperity (and King Richard too) back to England, and you help Robin and his
gang to complete this task by reclaiming the throne from John.
The first thing that stood
out to me about Robin Hood is the amount of different things that you can do as
you play. The main element of the game seemed to revolve around a RISK based
format, where you hire troops in one of five different classes (peasants,
footmen, archers, knights, and catapults) to defend your territories and march
forward to expand your control. By expanding your influence, this gives you more
money at the beginning of each turn, which of course is needed in recruiting and
hiring more soldiers on to fight for you. At many times during the game, you may
of course find that you don’t have enough gold to do everything that you want to
do, and that’s where Robin’s legend and talents begin to come into play.
We all remember how Robin
would steal from the rich and give to the poor, right? Well, you get to steal
from the rich and give to your armies in this game, which of course helps the
people of England to have a peaceful existence once more by getting out from
under the tyrannical hand of Prince John. In order to do this you can tell Robin
to raid passing merchant caravans or even run raids on the strongholds of his
enemies. Each of these options plays out in a different format, the first of
which being Robin hiding in a tree with an FPS viewpoint where you launch arrows
at passing soldiers and wagons while trying to avoid detection. The second
option instead becomes a 2-D moving kind of action based gameplay, where you
move Robin throughout castles, over rooftops, across dining hall tables and
throughout strongholds fighting all the way against footmen and knights of your
enemy to reach their gold storage.
There are a couple of other
ways to get some cash if you seem to be low is to hold jousting tournaments
against the lords of the other areas that you are trying to capture. This will
put you in command of Ivanhoe as he rides against his opponents with you in full
control of making the horse speed up and then aiming the lance to try and
shatter it against an enemy rider. In addition, Will Scarlet will inform you of
various events that you can select from, like raiding a passing band of soldiers
to help equip your troops of helping to free a number of captured knights to
have them join your cause … or even a “Robin trademark” of rescuing a damsel or
two in distress from the keep of an enemy.
Lastly, one area of the game
that you are responsible for keeping up with also is upgrading your strongholds.
By doing this, it allows you to house more soldiers in a certain area and also
helps to repel against an enemy attack. Your opponents will also have
strongholds too, and the game will then switch into a “siege mode” in which you
have to use your catapults to knock down the walls of the opponent castles in
order to breach the wall and charge in to take over. You can either elect to
knock down all four walls, which of course leaves them defenseless against your
onslaught, or you can simply remove one and charge in … it’s up to you, and may
depend on how confident you are in your army’s abilities and size.
Overall, there is a lot to
do and a lot of distractions overall that you can partake in to help kill
monotony, but even with all of these things the game can still tend to be
repetitive. The combat when you go up against an enemy takes place on an
unfurled scroll in which you take each troop type (represented by a chess piece
look to it) and march X number of units across set paths at an enemy, and there
are usually only 3 or 5 set paths to move down. There isn’t a lot of action to
it, and a lot of the overall strategy elements tend to simply be on “who’s got
the biggest army” rather than using a certain troop type to try and overtake
another due to strengths and weaknesses. Each troop type can learn new
techniques, like catapults can start using “barrage” and archers can begin using
“cover fire”, but overall they don’t seem to do a whole lot to really put a
heavy emphasis on turning the tides of battle if you happen to be the low man.
Secondly, doing things like
castle raids can be fun, but the action just tends to feel repetitive there as
well. Robin runs either left or right, and has three main types of attacks …
high, low, and a thrust. He can block oncoming sword swings from the bad guys,
and then attack back, but there really isn’t any need to try and switch styles
during play since you can literally run through each raid using only the block
and low attack button. There are no real combos to pull off, except for “press X
four times”, and the action just seems very robotic and simple in each tangle
that you get into along the way. Even fights with higher up opponents like the
Sheriff of Nottingham play out the same way.
The game probably won’t take
too long for any RTS or RISK fan that is well versed in how to play those types
of games to run through it. Within a matter of hours, those types of gamers
would probably be able to see all that they could see, move in and take John’s
stronghold, and win the game. Friar Tuck does show up and is collecting a ransom
to bring King Richard back home again, but it’s really hefty and probably won’t
be the main focus on trying to win that way versus just overtaking everyone.
Overall, Robin Hood:
Defender of the Crown has a highly entertaining story and provides a good amount
of fun for a short time. Big fans of the series (since it was released on PC and
NES years ago) will probably be happy to see the hero return in more of a modern
look and format. Others may want to use this as a weekend rental or at least
check it out before you make the commitment to purchase it.
Gameplay: 6.7
There are a lot
of different distractions to get into to veer off of the RISK style of “defend
and capture” gameplay, like jousting, raiding castles, or assaulting soldiers
and merchants from treetops, but overall the game tends to feel repetitive since
each general area usually only consists of simplistic movement and one or two
buttons to be pressed. The overall combat element of the game as you look to
overtake opponents and defend your areas also sadly feels very repetitive, since
it usually comes down to who has the bigger force and the fact that you pretty
much pick a troop, tell it where to go, then sit and watch as you either mow
down your enemy or get slaughtered.
Graphics: 8.0
The overall
presentation of Robin Hood looks nice. There are some nifty looking day and
night caravan raid scenes, and the forest areas that you raided from looked very
detailed. Some other areas of the game like castle sieges, jousting tournaments,
or castle raids looked almost cinematic at times with the camerawork and angles
that were used. Other parts of the game, like the world map were stationary but
looked good for what they were there to do.
Sound: 8.1
The dialogue and
voiceovers were entertaining and done well, and I didn’t skip the majority of
them because I was genuinely entertained by what was going on. Robin has his
sharp, smart aleck wit to him as we’ve all pictured him having, and even his own
merry men would squabble amongst each other in a comical and interesting style
that helped to move the story along. The music set the tone well for the game,
and things like thundering horse’s hooves or Little John yelling at his catapult
crews as they knocked down the walls of an enemy were good additions to the
overall game.
Difficulty: Medium
This kind of
depends on how good you are at games like RISK. People who are very good at that
sort of thing can find themselves blasting through it pretty quick, while others
may find it difficult trying to build, defend, attack, and raid in a good
balance that will help ensure victory.
Concept: 7.3
I thought this
was a great idea that just needed a little sprucing up. Doing combat in an RTS
fashion may have been a little more entertaining, while adding in some addition
combos (fighting game style) as you ran through castle raids would have been a
little more entertaining.
Overall: 6.5
While there are a
lot of things to possibly like about Robin Hood: Defender of the Crown, it
unfortunately just felt too repetitive. The combat (both as an army and with
Robin as an individual) is very basic and simplistic, and doesn’t offer much to
really work with, which hurt the overall element of the game as well. If you are
looking for a good weekend diversion, this provides enough things to do and
branching pathways to be entertaining, but I would strongly suggest checking it
out prior to making the final commitment to go ahead and buy it.
